The Doctors Dilemma | Page 4

speech, and
generally indisposed, at his age, to make much social effort. He shakes
Ridgeon's hand and beams at him cordially and jocularly.
SIR PATRICK. Well, young chap. Is your hat too small for you, eh?
RIDGEON. Much too small. I owe it all to you.
SIR PATRICK. Blarney, my boy. Thank you all the same. [He sits in
one of the arm-chairs near the fireplace. Ridgeon sits on the couch]. Ive
come to talk to you a bit. [To Redpenny] Young man: get out.
REDPENNY. Certainly, Sir Patrick [He collects his papers and makes
for the door].
SIR PATRICK. Thank you. Thats a good lad. [Redpenny vanishes].
They all put up with me, these young chaps, because I'm an old man, a
real old man, not like you. Youre only beginning to give yourself the
airs of age. Did you ever see a boy cultivating a moustache? Well, a
middle-aged doctor cultivating a grey head is much the same sort of
spectacle.
RIDGEON. Good Lord! yes: I suppose so. And I thought that the days
of my vanity were past. Tell me at what age does a man leave off being
a fool?
SIR PATRICK. Remember the Frenchman who asked his grandmother
at what age we get free from the temptations of love. The old woman
said she didn't know. [Ridgeon laughs]. Well, I make you the same
answer. But the world's growing very interesting to me now, Colly.
RIDGEON. You keep up your interest in science, do you?
SIR PATRICK. Lord! yes. Modern science is a wonderful thing. Look
at your great discovery! Look at all the great discoveries! Where are

they leading to? Why, right back to my poor dear old father's ideas and
discoveries. He's been dead now over forty years. Oh, it's very
interesting.
RIDGEON. Well, theres nothing like progress, is there?
SIR PATRICK. Dont misunderstand me, my boy. I'm not belittling
your discovery. Most discoveries are made regularly every fifteen years;
and it's fully a hundred and fifty since yours was made last. Thats
something to be proud of. But your discovery's not new. It's only
inoculation. My father practised inoculation until it was made criminal
in eighteen-forty. That broke the poor old man's heart, Colly: he died of
it. And now it turns out that my father was right after all. Youve
brought us back to inoculation.
RIDGEON. I know nothing about smallpox. My line is tuberculosis
and typhoid and plague. But of course the principle of all vaccines is
the same.
SIR PATRICK. Tuberculosis? M-m-m-m! Youve found out how to
cure consumption, eh?
RIDGEON. I believe so.
SIR PATRICK. Ah yes. It's very interesting. What is it the old cardinal
says in Browning's play? "I have known four and twenty leaders of
revolt." Well, Ive known over thirty men that found out how to cure
consumption. Why do people go on dying of it, Colly? Devilment, I
suppose. There was my father's old friend George Boddington of
Sutton Coldfield. He discovered the open-air cure in eighteen-forty. He
was ruined and driven out of his practice for only opening the windows;
and now we wont let a consumptive patient have as much as a roof over
his head. Oh, it's very VERY interesting to an old man.
RIDGEON. You old cynic, you dont believe a bit in my discovery.
SIR PATRICK. No, no: I dont go quite so far as that, Colly. But still,
you remember Jane Marsh?
RIDGEON. Jane Marsh? No.
SIR PATRICK. You dont!
RIDGEON. No.
SIR PATRICK. You mean to tell me you dont remember the woman
with the tuberculosis ulcer on her arm?
RIDGEON [enlightened] Oh, your washerwoman's daughter. Was her
name Jane Marsh? I forgot.

SIR PATRICK. Perhaps youve forgotten also that you undertook to
cure her with Koch's tuberculin.
RIDGEON. And instead of curing her, it rotted her arm right off. Yes: I
remember. Poor Jane! However, she makes a good living out of that
arm now by shewing it at medical lectures.
SIR PATRICK. Still, that wasnt quite what you intended, was it?
RIDGEON. I took my chance of it.
SIR PATRICK. Jane did, you mean.
RIDGEON. Well, it's always the patient who has to take the chance
when an experiment is necessary. And we can find out nothing without
experiment.
SIR PATRICK. What did you find out from Jane's case?
RIDGEON. I found out that the inoculation that ought to cure
sometimes kills.
SIR PATRICK. I could have told you that. Ive tried these modern
inoculations a bit myself. Ive killed people with them; and Ive cured
people with them; but I gave them up because I never could tell which I
was going to do.
RIDGEON [taking a pamphlet from a drawer in the writing-table and
handing it to him] Read that the next time you